Ecomstation 2.2 Beta 5 running on a Dell Optiplex 3020 Desktop Computer

Way back in the 1990s, I experienced IBM's OS/2 Warp 2.1 operating system. There wasn't a lot of software for it compared to Microsoft Windows 3.x, but OS/2 was a stable system. Had I stuck with writing instead of gaming, I may have stayed with OS/2 through the years, but alas, one cannot change history.

Fast forward to 2022, and OS/2 is less popular than even Linux. Nevertheless, OS/2 is still around and being actively developed. ArcaOS is the new name for OS/2. But between OS/2 Warp and ArcaOS, there was another developer that had named OS/2 as Ecomstation. Ecomstation was an updated OS/2 Warp 4 distribution that added drivers and support for more modern computer architectures.  

After my recent experiments with installing OS/2 Warp 4.52 in VirtualBox, I decided to try locating a copy of Ecomstation that I could try out. Several years ago I had downloaded a copy of a demo of Ecomstation 1.2, so I knew there was a demo image of Ecomstation somewhere out there on the World Wide Webs.

My search didn't take long. I found an ISO for Ecomstation 2.2 Beta 5 on a site that archives old websites and software. So I downloaded Ecomstation 2.2 Beta 5 and burned the ISO to a DVD.

I wasn't sure how well Ecomstation would run, but it turns out that it ran well on the Dell Optiplex 3020 desktop computer. I found the Optiplex 3020 in the scrap pile at work, and I decided it was a good candidate for this experiment.

Everything of importance to me worked fine. After Ecomstation booted, the graphics were set normally and the NIC was recognized, and I was able to connect to the Internet. I wasn't able to test the sound as I've not yet connected external speakers to the Dell Optiplex 3020; however, the internal speaker works as Ecomstation beeped at me a few times when Firefox crashed trying to run a Google search. Yahoo search worked okay, though.

The version of Firefox that was included with Ecomstation 2.2 was quite out of date. Firefox 10 is long gone, but it managed fairly well considering how old it is. Youtube didn't work, of course, but it wasn't surprising. 

In the future I will try figuring out how to install Ecomstation onto the hard drive and installing more recent web browsers along with installing WordPerfect for OS/2 and Lotus Smartsuite for OS/2.

Until next time, happy computing.


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